Distributors Urge United Action from Magazine Industry
At the MPA Retail Conference, a panel of distributors offered a compelling call to action for the industry to improve retail sales.
At the MPA Retail Conference, a panel of distributors offered a compelling call to action for the industry to improve retail sales.
At The MPA Retail Conference in April, a panel representing the industry’s major distributors—Drew Wintemberg, EVP sales, Time/Warner Retail, Jay Felts, SVP sales and marketing, Comag, and Jay Wysong, EVP and COO, Distribution Services, Inc.—offered a compelling call to action for the industry to improve retail sales. The day’s earlier presentations offered positive retail performance figures for the magazine category, and this panel offered some of their own, but the full sales potential of the category can only be met if the industry unites in its message to retailers, said Wintemberg.
Despite rock-solid performance, retailers still aren’t giving magazines the space or attention needed to exploit the sales figures. “We, as an industry, have got to find a way to get together and make it easier to do business with our category,” said Wintemberg. “We have to put our egos aside because if we don’t we’re going to lose the space to other categories.”
Wintemberg compare the effort needed to sell the category into retail to the effort the industry puts into lobbying for postal rates. “We need to mobilize our industry around newsstand in the same way as we have with our postal rate lobbying efforts. We need the same commitment.”
Comag’s Felts noted that when dealing at the retail level, the category must be sold first and then sell the title. “We need to secure the beachhead first, and then get into the individual titles,” he said.
Felts said the category’s profitability, despite being comparatively high, remains hidden. “On the supply side, this comes across as an unnecessarily complex business, but we’re quickly approaching the $5 billion sales mark as a category in 2010.”
Wintemberg said the panel’s presentation will soon be delivered to industry organizations to help facilitate the united message. “You have to take it and use it as a preamble every time you make a call. Treat this as an industry first,” he said.
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